Portrait of Monsieur Bertin
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Portrait of monsieur Bertin is a 1832 portrait by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres of Louis-François Bertin, director of the Journal des Débats. It is an archetype of bourgeois portraiture, influencing academic painters like Léon Bonnat and modern ones like Edgar Degas and Pablo Picasso. It is signed J.INGRES PINXIT 1832 top left.
Bertin—then aged 66 and then very much the man of his age—probably came into contact with Ingres via his son Édouard Bertin, a student of the painter from 1827 and/or the art critic on the Journal, Ingres's friend Étienne-Jean Delécluze (he and Delécluze had first met in David's studio in 1797). Ingres was accepting few commissions in the 1830s but was moved by Bertin's strong personality and accepted this one. In the chronology of Ingres's work it follows the portrait of the comte de Pastoret (1826) and precedes that of comte Molé (1834).
On a brown ground lighted from the right, Bertin is shown three-quarter profile, seated on a chair whose arm is seen, with a reflection of the window. His fingers are spread on his knees and his hair is grey or nearly white. He wears a jacket, trousers and a brown waistcoat, with a white shirt and cravate showing at its open neck. In his right pocket are a pair of glasses and behind him is a frieze across the wall with a Greek meander motif. L.F. BERTIN is inscribed top right.
Bertin left the work to his daughter Louise on his death. She left it to her niece Marie, who married Jules Bapst, also director of the Journal, and their niece Cécile Bapst was its last private owner. Cécile sold it to the musée du Louvre in 1897, where it now hangs.
Bibliography
- Hans Naef, Die Bildniszeichnungen von J.-A.-D. Ingres, Benteli Verlag Bern, 1979, tome III, pages 114-135.
- Daniel Ternois, Ingres : Le portrait de monsieur Bertin, éd Réunion des Musées Nationaux collection solo 1998 ISBN 2711837491
